The death of communist tyrant Fidel Castro has yielded much-deserved coverage of the monstrous nature of his tyrannical rule. What has gone virtually unreported, however, is the direct and instrumental role Castro played in the torture and murder of American POWs in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. The story of Castro’s atrocities against American soldiers in this conflict is rarely ever told, least of all by our mainstream media. During the Vietnam War, Castro sent a gang of his henchmen to run the “Cuban Program” at the Cu Loc POW camp in Hanoi, which became known as “the Zoo.” As...

Ten Australian soldiers have been recognised for their bravery more than 50 years after they fought in the Vietnam War's Battle of Long Tan. On 18 August, 1966, members of D Company, who were outnumbered 20 to one, fought against the odds to defeat the Viet Cong. About 245 Viet Cong were killed in the rubber plantation and 18 Australians were killed and more were wounded. But for half a century many of the men received no official recognition of their courage, despite sustained campaigning for recognition. Long Tan soldiers recognised with bravery awards: Now 10 of those soldiers have...

I saw the form of The Lord step into our presence and walk among us and a great Peace filled the room then I heard this . . . The Shulamite(peaceful) Bride is in the Garden and I smell her "Aroma of Delight" and "this is worship" . I shall reveal the answers to dilemas,the truth(clarity) where there has been revelations,visions and dreams yes,but in this truth shall come My strategy for your breakthroughs. Song of Solomon 6:2-4Amplified Bible (The Shulammite Bride) 2 “My beloved has gone down to his garden, To the beds of balsam, To feed his...

Lance Corporal Pittman grabbed a machine gun and belts of extra ammunition and rushed ahead, firing into the enemy position. He destroyed two enemy automatic weapons and kept advancing, into what the Medal of Honor citation described as “a withering hail of enemy mortar and small-arms fire” to reach wounded Marines 50 yards up the trail. “As he reached the position where the leading Marines had fallen, he was suddenly confronted with a bold frontal attack by 30 to 40 enemy,” the citation continued. “Totally disregarding his safety, he calmly established a position in the middle of the trail and...

Tom Hayden has passed away at 76 and the New York Times obituary recalled him as a “civil rights and anti-war activist.” That bears little resemblance to the real person, especially in regard to Vietnam. For the full story of the war, millennials might want to check out America In Vietnam, by Guenter Lewy. The conflict pitted the Communist North, backed by the Soviet Union, against the non-Communist South, backed by the United States. Many Americans opposed U.S. involvement in the conflict, for a variety of reasons.

Police in Vietnam's southeast Dong Nai province are searching for more than 200 presumed drug addicts who broke out of a compulsory rehabilitation center. About 560 inmates broke out Sunday, some using fire extinguishers and sticks to break walls and windows, but police recaptured about 330. The center holds 1,481 inmates, about twice the center's capacity. Residents in the province east of Ho Chi Minh City have been urged to stay indoors and lock their doors after inmates began moving through the area. Some officials believe the escaped inmates left the province aboard taxis.

A profile of Secretary of State John Kerry published Sunday in The New Yorker reveals that, 11 years after his election loss to George W. Bush in 2004, Kerry still believes he was robbed via systematic fraud. The article itself, written by David Remnick, focuses mostly on Kerry’s efforts to achieve peace and democracy in the Middle East, but it also dwells extensively on his presidential defeat more than a decade ago. “In 2004, when Kerry lost the Presidential race to George W. Bush, who is widely considered the worst President of the modern era, he refused to challenge the...

Russia is considering plans to restore military bases in Vietnam and Cuba that had served as pivots of Soviet global military power during the Cold War, Russian news agencies quoted Russian Deputy Defence Minister Nikolai Pankov as saying on Friday. "We are dealing with this issue," the agencies quoted Pankov as saying in Russia's parliament.

The Russian military is considering the possibility of regaining its Soviet-era bases on Cuba and in Vietnam, the Defense Ministry said Friday, a statement that comes amid growing U.S.-Russia tensions over Syria. Deputy Defense Minister Nikolai Pankov told lawmakers Friday that the ministry is considering the possibility of establishing footholds far away from Russia’s borders. Responding to a lawmaker’s question if the military could return to Cuba and Vietnam, Pankov said the military is “reviewing” a decision to withdraw from them, but didn’t offer any specifics. “As for our presence on faraway outposts, we are doing this work,” he said....

Vietnam’s government has officially labeled a California-based anti-Communist group a terrorist organization and warned that anyone involved with it will be considered an accomplice in terrorism and will be dealt with in accordance with Vietnamese law. The Ministry of Public Security said in a statement that Viet Tan, or the Vietnam Reform Party, has been carrying out terrorist activities to end Communist rule in Vietnam. […] The group was formed in 1982 by a vice admiral in the former U.S.-backed South Vietnamese government. Viet Tan says it is committed to nonviolent struggle to end Communist rule. The U.S. government has...

Trinh Thi Ngo, a soft-spoken radio announcer known as Hanoi Hannah who entertained American forces during the Vietnam War while trying to persuade them that the conflict was immoral, died on Friday in Ho Chi Minh City. She was believed to be 85.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered Vietnam a credit line on Saturday of half a billion dollars for defence cooperation, giving a lift to a country rapidly pursing a military deterrent as discord festers in the South China Sea. The deal was among a dozen cooperation agreements Modi signed in Hanoi alongside his Vietnamese counterpart, Nguyen Xuan Phuc, on the first visit to the country by an Indian prime minister in 15 years. India and Vietnam share borders and large trade volumes with China and have repeatedly locked horns with Beijing, over the territorial disputes in the Himalayas and the South...

A Vietnamese woman paid a friend to cut off her hand and foot in a bid to claim a handsome insurance payout, state-run media reported on Thursday (Aug 25). The woman, identified only as L T N, checked into a Hanoi hospital in May with one third of her left foot and one third of her left hand severed, but doctors told her they could not reattach the limbs. She later told police she was struck by a train as she walked on the tracks and was rescued by her friend Doan Van D, according to Tuoi Tre's English edition.

Vietnamese authorities have agreed to allow restricted access to the Long Tan site after negotiations with the Australian Government overnight. Access to the site is being limited to groups of 100 people or fewer. The Federal Government's Smart Traveller website advises that any visitors to the Battle of Long Tan site cannot wear medals or uniforms, carry banners or make speeches. The Vietnamese Government said the commemoration ceremony to mark the 50th anniversary remained cancelled. Veterans' Affairs Minister Dan Tehan, who yesterday described the last-minute cancellation as "a kick in the guts", said he was glad for the reprieve. "The...

A commemoration ceremony for the 50th anniversary of the battle of Long Tan in Vietnam has been cancelled. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade confirmed Vietnamese authorities had cancelled Thursday's Veterans Day at the Long Tan cross site. The department said it understood private access to the site was still permitted and the advice of exercising normal safety precautions in Vietnam was still current. Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop said in a statement the Vietnamese government had advised it would not permit the ceremony to go ahead. An official party including the Australian and New Zealand ambassadors will still...

Vietnam has discreetly fortified several of its islands in the disputed South China Sea with new mobile rocket launchers capable of striking China's runways and military installations across the vital trade route, according to Western officials. Diplomats and military officers told Reuters that intelligence shows Hanoi has shipped the launchers from the Vietnamese mainland into position on five bases in the Spratly islands in recent months, a move likely to raise tensions with Beijing.

Vero Beach, FL - (TRUNEWS) U.S. Senator John McCain recorded a Tokyo Rose-style propaganda message that was broadcast on North Vietnamese radio in 1969. TRUNEWS, a nonprofit Christian digital news app, obtained the bombshell audio recording and released it today on the organization’s daily newscast hosted by Rick Wiles. TRUNEWS acquired the audio recording in cooperation with WeSearchR.com, a new media company founded by Charles Johnson. The 1969 North Vietnamese radio broadcast has never been heard in the United States of America. In fact, there has never been any knowledge that such a recording existed. The audio recording was found...

U.S. Senator John McCain recorded a Tokyo Rose-style propaganda message that was broadcast on North Vietnamese radio in 1969. Today on TRUNEWS, host Rick Wiles shares the bombshell audio recording and has released it today on the program. Trunews acquired the audio recording in cooperation with WeSearchR.com, a new media company founded by Charles Johnson.

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) convened a needed Task Force on Reducing Regulatory Burdens as part of his legislative agenda, "A Better Way." The Speaker and his colleagues who worked on the task force have rightly identified the massive regulatory burden imposed by federal bureaucrats as an obstacle to economic growth and a distortion of our constitutional form of government. That is why it is baffling that Ryan has failed to bring regulatory reform legislation that recently passed the Senate to the floor of the House for a vote. The tale is one of catfish and courage. The catfish you...

Tong Phuoc Phuc is an exceptional man, with an exceptional way of dealing with the rampant abortion rate in Vietnam: He adopts the unwanted children. Over fifty of them so far, to be exact. In Vietnam, abortion is common and practiced at nearly every hospital. Faced with often crippling poverty, women often choose abortion—over 114,000 of them every single year. Faced with the reality that many of these women do not know where to turn and a severe shortage of shelters for pregnant women, Phuc has opened the doors of his home to any mother who needs care and needs...

Lt. Col. Charles S. Kettles, an Army helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War, will be awarded the Medal of Honor in a ceremony later this month for an act of heroism almost 50 years ago. At the time he was given the Distinguished Service Cross, but a dedicated amateur historian finally talked the Department of Defense into reviewing the matter. Following an act of Congress and a Presidential signature (required for Medal of Honor awards), Kettles will receive his new medal in a July 18 ceremony at the White House.

On the streets of Hanoi, you can’t help but notice the vibrant and entrepreneurial energy in the air. The capital city is home to many talented engineers and there’s a growing maker community in the works. After navigating by motorbike through the maze-like back alleys of one of the residential neighborhoods of southern Hanoi, we arrive at a beautiful, four-storey traditional Vietnamese house. The family that owns it has been living there for seven generations. The top floor is home to a makerspace created by a group of 20-something engineers with a passion for hardware products. The ten-meter-square (100 square...

Army Capt. Paul “Buddy” Bucha faked out the enemy while leading a motley crew in Vietnam. The Medal of Honor recipient was hailed as a hero after he made North Vietnamese fighters believe his 187th Infantry Regiment was much bigger than it really was. The combination of bravery and cunning helped him earn the nation's highest military honor, an award bestowed upon him by the president. In 1967, Bucha — who graduated from West Point and earned an MBA at Stanford — arrived in Vietnam and was given a squad filled “with the rejects of all the other units,” including...

The US Navy is making its presence known in the heavily disputed South China Sea. It recently deployed two aircraft carriers along with about 140 aircraft and additional ships to conduct training exercises. This action comes as China and the Philippines await a decision from The Hague about whether or not the former can legally claim sovereignty over the South China Sea.

Vietnam is believed to be embarking on a programme to produce its own variant of a missile based on the Russian Zvezda-Strela 3M24 Uran (SS-N-25 Switchblade). While the details of how it will be produced are not yet clear, the programme would be a boost to local industry. It would also be likely to simplify logistics support for the 3M24s already being operated by the Vietnam People’s navy, write Douglas Barrie and Tom Waldwyn. Vietnam has become the second Asia-Pacific nation, it would appear, to embark on the indigenous production of a missile based on the Russian Zvezda-Strela 3M24 Uran...

Dozens of activists were detained in Vietnam's two biggest cities Sunday as they tried to hold protests calling for greater government transparency over a recent spate of mass fish deaths. Tonnes of dead fish and other marine life began washing up on central Vietnamese shores two months ago and continued to appear for two to three weeks, sparking widespread anger. Frustration has been further fuelled by a perceived lack of clarity from the communist leadership about what caused the deaths. Major streets in central Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City were temporarily deserted on Sunday morning as security forces blanketed...

BERLIN: Vietnam and South Korea are looking seriously at buying refurbished Lockheed Martin Corp P-3 and S-3 maritime surveillance planes to counter China's military buildup and repeated North Korean missile launches, the company said. Vietnam is expected to request formal pricing and availability data on four to six older U.S. Navy P-3 Orion aircraft in the next few months, Clay Fearnow, a senior executive with Lockheed's aeronautics division, told Reuters at the Berlin air show last week. The Obama administration's move to completely lift its arms embargo on Vietnam last month paved the way for such a sale, but any...

ULAANBAATAR (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Sunday the United States would consider any Chinese establishment of an air defense zone over the South China Sea to be a "provocative and destabilizing act". U.S. officials have expressed concern that an international court ruling expected in coming weeks on a case brought by the Philippines against China over its South China Sea claims could prompt Beijing to declare an air defense identification zone, or ADIZ, as it did over the East China Sea in 2013. "We would consider an ADIZ...over portions of the South China Sea as...

Joe Bruno on Boxing – Muhammad Ali is Not a Hero. Muhammad Ali passed away Friday night, June 3, 2016. I wrote the article below around the year 2000. I got to know him fairly well in the 1980’s, when I was Vice President of the Boxing Writers Association. He was a real friendly man, and we had several nice conversations about what I have written below. Still, his death doesn’t change what he was, and what he did early in his career. It is with a sad heart that I stand by what is written below. It’s just the...

India is ready to sell the world's fastest anti-ship cruise missile to Vietnam. The BrahMos uses ramjet engine technology to achieve speeds of up to Mach 3, making it a deadly addition to Vietnam's arsenal. BrahMos was developed jointly by India and Russia, its name a mashup of the Brahmaputra and Moscow Rivers. The missile was developed through the 1990s and early 2000s from the Russian P-800 Oniks anti-ship missile. It is in service with the Indian Armed Forces. This is the fastest low-altitude missile in the world. The missile has two stages. The first, consisting of a solid-fuel rocket,...

President Obama went after Donald Trump again Thursday, urging his audience at the Air Force Academy graduation to reject calls for isolationism. “There’s a debate going on in our country about our nation’s role in the world,” Mr. Obama told the new Air Force officers at Colorado Springs, Colorado. “America cannot shirk the mantle of leadership. We can’t be isolationist.” Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has been accused of isolationism for proposing to build a wall on the border with Mexico, among other reasons. He has rejected that criticism, saying he is focused on security, not isolationism. The

DECADES after the Vietnam War ended, the remains of 22 fallen Australian servicemen have finally arrived back in Australia for burial on home soil. Under full military honours their coffins were unloaded from two RAAF C17 Globemaster jets at Richmond RAAF base in Western Sydney, with hundreds of emotional family members, friends and Vietnam veterans watching on. Also arriving home were the remains of three servicemen killed on deployment in Malaysia, and eight dependants — partners and children of servicemen who died overseas and were interred in a Malaysian cemetery. Service personnel from all three arms of the Australian Defence...

Monday, May 30, 2016 Obama's Ho Chi Minh Trail Posted by Daniel Greenfield On his visit to meet with Communist leaders in Vietnam, Obama criticized the United States for having, “too much money in our politics, and rising economic inequality, racial bias in our criminal justice system.” He praised Ho Chi Minh’s evocation of the “American Declaration of Independence” and claimed that we had “shared ideals” with the murderous Communist dictator. Shortly after the “evocation” that Obama praised, his beloved Ho was hard at work purging the opposition, political and religious. When Obama references these “shared ideals”, does he perhaps...

The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the RESULT of what happens to a nation bent on “domination or conquest” As Barack Obama finishes out the last eight months of his second term as President, he has started working through his bucket list of things to do before he leaves office. This cringe-worthy endeavor has gotten off to a treason-worthy start with his trip to Vietnam highlighted by a photo op with a picture of Ho Chi Minh behind him. And I can’t think why Obama would have made his trip to Hiroshima except to present his warped vision of...

VENICE (CBSLA.com) — Vandals defaced a memorial to Vietnam war veterans in Venice – an awful sight on this Memorial Day weekend. Stewart Oscars welled up as he looked at the vandalized mural located on Pacific Avenue near Sunset Court. It was covered in graffiti from end to end. “This knocked me out. So sickening. Just sadness…think of all these people. They’re gone,” Oscars said. “I remember the Vietnam war and how friends went to war, and bodies came back. Somehow, it has to be taught that this is not a good idea. This is actually stupid.” The memorial was...

The social network was blocked several times earlier this month The Vietnamese government restricted access to Facebook Inc inside Vietnam for several days this week as part of a broader crackdown on human rights and political dissidents during a visit by President Barack Obama, two activist organizations said on Thursday. Officials of Access Now, a digital rights organization, and Viet Tan, a Vietnamese pro-democracy group, said the social media site was restricted and at times blocked inside Vietnam from Sunday to Wednesday, citing reports from people inside the country on Twitter TWTR -0.76% and to Access Now’s digital security help...

In an address to the people of communist-ruled Vietnam on Tuesday, President Obama made a case for the importance of upholding human rights, prefacing it by saying that the United States, too, “is still striving to live up to our founding ideals.” “No nation is perfect,” he said at the National Convention Center in Hanoi. “Two centuries on, the United States is still trying to striving to live up to our founding ideals.” “We still deal with our shortcomings – too much money in politics, and rising economic inequality,” Obama continued. “Racial bias in our criminal justice system. Women still...

Barack Obama has wrapped up his historic visit to Vietnam by throwing down some beats for a Vietnamese rapper. The President was taking questions at a town hall-style meeting in Ho Chi Minh city when a young woman introduced herself as a hip hop artist before asking her question. Mr Obama immediately invited her to show off her talent, asking "do you need a few beats?" The woman, named Suboi and renowned as Vietnam's "queen of hip hop," then serenaded Obama with Vietnamese lyrics about whether people are really happy if they have lots of money. Seemingly delighted with the...

Littoral Combat Ships and F-18 Super-Hornet jets will probably top Vietnam’s shopping list for US-made weapons now that President Barack Obama has lifted Washington’s 50-year-old arms embargo on Hanoi, former US diplomat Jim Jatras told Sputnik. WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Obama announced in Hanoi on Monday the lifting of the US embargo on Vietnam during his three-day visit. "Among the systems Hanoi reportedly is interested in are Lockheed Martin’s F-16 jets, Boeing’s F/A-18 Super Hornet jets, competing littoral combat ship designs from Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics, and precision-guidance munitions from Raytheon and Boeing," Jatras said on Tuesday. Jatras dismissed Obama’s...

More than four decades after the fall of Saigon, Washington is still holding on to various classified details about its fight in Southeast Asia. Among the Pentagon media arm’s still-secret records are photos and video of updated World War II-era bombers the U.S. Air Force sent to hit Laos. In May 1966, pilots and crews from the 603rd Air Commando Squadron brought eight B-26K Invaders from their base in Louisiana to Nakhon Phanom Air Base in Thailand. Desperate to stem the flow of troops and supplies flowing down the Ho Chi Minh Trail from North Vietnam, the flying branch had...

HANOI, Vietnam — The United States is rescinding a decades-old ban on sales of lethal military equipment to Vietnam, President Obama announced at a news conference in Hanoi on Monday, ending one of the last legal vestiges of the Vietnam War. “The decision to lift the ban was not based on China or any other considerations,” he said, with the Vietnamese president, Tran Dai Quang, standing stiffly by his side. “It was based on our desire to complete what has been a lengthy process of moving toward normalization with Vietnam.”

This to me, is a total disgrace to America and our Veterans that served during Viet Nam. We have a wall with names of fallen Veterans that served this Country for it's freedoms and making it safe, and this President goes there and offers them weapons and other things... Maybe I am upset because a lot of people I knew served there, people I grew up with, boys that I dated, men that I rode with, that never came back home... I was privledged to see the "Viet Nam Wall" when I went with the Rolling Thunder out of PA....

....Obama has announced that the United States is fully lifting the ban on the sale of military equipment to Vietnam, which has been in place for decades. In a joint news conference with Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang, Obama said that the removal of the ban on lethal weapons w

President Obama is visiting Vietnam today and paused for a picture with communist party President Tran Dai Quang in front of a bust of Ho Chi Minh. Perhaps it’s just me, but given the nature of the diplomatic relationship this specific optic seems rather inappropriate.

In a move that is raising concerns among some Vietnam War veterans, President Obama will discuss selling more U.S. arms to Hanoi during his visit to Vietnam that began Sunday night. Top White House advisers said Mr. Obama hasn’t made a decision whether to lift the partial U.S. embargo on sending military equipment to Vietnam, where more than 58,200 U.S. soldiers were killed before the fall of Saigon in 1975. But the administration sees advantages in easing the embargo, both as a warning to expansionist China and as leverage to compel the communist regime in Hanoi to improve its record...

Ahead of President Barack Obama’s first visit to Vietnam, the country voted Sunday in once-every-five-year-elections for a rubber-stamp parliament whose membership has already been largely determined by the Communist Party. Amid worries about soaring public debt, a serious budget deficit and China’s aggressive claims in nearby seas, there’s also high hope for Obama’s visit, both in the government, which wants him to lift an arms export embargo so it can better deal with Beijing, and among rights activists who want him to hold to account a repressive one-party state seen as treating its critics abysmally. […] Obama must balance a...

CAM RANH BAY, Vietnam — The ghosts of the Vietnam War have finally faded at the strategic port of Cam Ranh Bay. More than 40 years ago, US forces left this massive base where Marines landed, B-52s loaded up for bombing raids, and wounded US soldiers were treated. Now, some Vietnamese say they are yearning for the US military to return. "On Facebook, there was a question recently: What do you want from President Obama's visit?" said Vo Van Tao, 63, who fought as a young North Vietnamese infantry soldier against the United States. "Some people said they wanted democracy....